Phishing sites on the rise

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The number of phishing sites reported to the Anti-Phishing
Working Group has risen by 28 percent each month from July to
November this year, the group says in its latest
Phishing Attack Trends Report.

A total of 1518 active phishing sites were reported in November,
most of which were hosted in the United States. Fifty-one barnds
were covered in all but 80 percent of the attempts at phishing were
targeted at six brands.

The group found that the longest time a phishing site stayed
online was 31 days while the average time such a site was online
was a little over six days.

There were 8459 new, unique phishing email messages reported to
the APWG last month, nearly four times the number of unique reports
received in August (2158), representing an average monthly growth
rate of 34 percent since July (2625).

The US was found to host 27 percent of the phishing websites
reported but the group said it had seen a rise in the number of
such sites hosted in China over the last month.

China was found to host 21 percent of the sites reported, with
other prominents countries being South Korea (10 percent), Japan
(5.5 percent), Canada (2.6 percent), Brazil (2.1 percent), Germany
(2.1 percent), India (1.84 percent), the UK (1.76 percent) and
France (1.54 percent). The remaining sites were spread among 50
other countries, which the APWG said was the largest number of
countries to date.